How do I help someone in pain? "To support and help someone in pain, the first true thing is always action, not words." Guy Finley explains how working on your own mindfulness and self-awareness can educate you before you give advice to a friend in pain.

Most of us carry, buried in the depths of ourselves, untold amounts of unconscious woe. Regardless of our religion, skin color, social position, or cultural conditioning, psychological pain plays no favorites... and we all pay the price of the ensuing blame game.

Topics covered: Everything in creation is being acted upon by that which is greater so that it can be brought into the greater whole; Every creation is made more resilient by forces that might seem to oppose it or work against its own best interests; Negative reactions gather associated thoughts that justify those reactions; Useless suffering does not exist outside of the consciousness that creates it...

Classroom Talk: 12/9/2022 - Without resistance to its appearance... there is no negativity inherent in suffering; to realize the fact of this truth is the first step in proving (to yourself) that all forms of psychological pain are optional.

In this answer to a viewer's question, "Secret of Letting Go" author Guy Finley explains that a genuine resolution to psychological pain will never be found within the very system that produces the pain in the first place. Awareness of this fact is the answer that you're looking for.

Student Talks: 4/29/2022 - Key Lesson: It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.

Topics covered: The way you walk out of dark moments is that you stop walking into them. So-called dark moments cannot be separated from who and what you think you are in those moments; We cannot separate a dark moment from the unconscious resistance to that moment; What we call a dark moment cannot be separated from the level of consciousness that meets and reacts to that moment...

Classroom Talk: 4/24/2022 - It is a distinct stage in the development of the aspirant when -- rather than being easily distracted by some imagined consolation for his pain, or by concluding who is to blame for it -- his first and real preference in that dark moment is to increase his awareness of his condition, and not to find ways around it.

When we have moments where someone or something does what is upsetting to us, we look out and see a world that is out of order, do we not? And the pain we are experiencing in that moment cannot be separated from our perception that this person, this thing is wrong and out of order.

Topics Covered: What do we all really need in this life? We need to be loved; Everything we do in this life, however mistaken or incomplete it may be, is for the sake of feeling loved. But there is an immense difference between feeling loved and being loved. Feeling loved is a desire; being loved is an action; In order to love you as myself I must first stop trying to make you into me.

Classroom Talk: 12/26/2021 - Many times the best gift we can offer another is what we're willing to keep for ourselves; for instance, rather than burdening others with our fears and doubts -- or judging them for the same -- we choose, instead, to bear this pain in conscious silence. So that not only might we realize a spiritual strength that can't be awakened in any other way...

Topic: Detect and Drop Useless Thoughts that Are Dragging You Down (12/1/21 Classroom Talk)